h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some time back I decided to catch up with the philosophers via some lectures at a local university. My impression was that, over the last century or so, they have pretty much given up on explaining the big issues. Whatever science didn't take, the poets took. So now there are only areas along the lines of "philosophy of ..." (science, language, etc.), but not the "phhilosophy of everything".

Wittgenstein even went so far as to say all the questions of philosophy should be dissolved by looking closely at the language, i.e. the question doesn't really exist (or something). And he concluded that what we can't know, we can't talk about. Of course, not everybody has taken this to heart.

I believe Wittgenstein was right.

Matt

I find Wittgenstein's work appealing also. It seems to be a little more down to earth than much of philosophy, and he can also say things like:

"It would strike me as ridiculous to want to doubt the existence of Napoleon; but if someone doubted the existence of the earth 150 years ago, perhaps I should be more willing to listen, for now he is doubting our whole system of evidence."

So he can't be all bad.

I find it vaguely amusing that the Logical Positivist movement sprung out of his Tracatus, in light of the above quotation.

I am similarly amused by the scientists and their string theory:

"If string theory is to be a theory of quantum gravity, then the average size of a string should be somewhere near the length scale of quantum gravity, called the Planck length, which is about 10-33 centimeters, or about a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter. Unfortunately, this means that strings are way too small to see by current or expected particle physics technology (or financing!!) ..."

So some of the big guns in physics are suspicious that they are doing philosophy rather than science ...

I asked a leading physics researcher once how far string theory is turnin into philosophy rather than physics, but he answered that it is more turning into maths. The people who are working these things out are no longer physicists but mathmaticians. the physicists are the ones trying to work out what on earth the maths means in practical terms.

Yes, here in the US, the PBS TV series had experts saying similar things, i.e. the "math" (sorry for the singular US version) is too elegant to be ... well, wrong? (Paraphrasing from memory). I dunno, "elegant math" and physical reality are not, IMHO, the same thing. Yes, Einstein managed to connect elegant math and physical reality - even predicting unobserved but later proven phenomena, the proof of the pudding. But he was a physicist, and didn't just take ANY elegant math, only the "right" one.

But I am an engineer. The "proof" is: Only if it works. Einstein's science works, not sure about strings.

Indeed. The problem with string theory however, is that we're looking for something which is almost entirely unobservable. Matter occurs at vibrations in the string. I suppose if you could find a causal relationship concerning matter movement, electron displacement, distance and string frequency then maybe you could find some sort of experimental evidence. But that isn't looking for a needle in a haystack, thats looking for a particular hydrogen atom in the sun.

I agree that phillosphy seems to be no longer physics and is either maths or philosophy. However this I don't think will last physcists are starting to use string theory to make predicitons admittidlybehond current capabilities to test but not so far behond that it will never happen.

But you are assuming a prograssion of infinite enlightenment. Who are we to say what will happen and what will not?